So I don’t rush over to Helena when she cries out for help…. often I am busy but I also think the pause gives her time to give it a go. The other day I apologised as her tone implied she may have actually needed me.. “it’s ok mum if you did I wouldn’t learn anything”..

Then today she spent a while on our walk making a house for her sheep in tree roots and being happy. We sat for over an hour having lunch in the sun and she made “guides” meaning guys?

I got instructions – you pull out the stem of some kind of long gone flower which had a hollow stem. Break off the ends. Stick things in each end.

She had also collected rather a lot of treasures on the way to our picnic site, furry leaves, the covers of magnolia buds, flowers… she was developing a theory about, buds staying warm over winter and plants not wanting to loose water out of their leaves and how to go about this…. one of the leaves was shiny, waxy.

“I like learning and nature, it’s the best way of learning.” She told me nature, learning and some other descriptive word that I’ve forgotten were her favorite words…. “do you like them Mum?”

“There are a million things I want to be, a singer, a person who writes poems or books but I mostly want be a scientist. I like making other people happy. Mostly I like to learn,  I like to help other people learn”